


List of Demands

by Lesetoilesfous, muirgen_lys



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Light Angst, Mage Rights, Misunderstandings, Past Abuse, Power Dynamics, anti chantry, pre-fenders - Freeform, referenced past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lesetoilesfous/pseuds/Lesetoilesfous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/muirgen_lys/pseuds/muirgen_lys
Summary: "Did I hear correctly? You're an abomination!?"A misunderstanding between Anders and Fenris over an offhand comment in the market leads to a late-night conversation that doesn't go at all how either one of them expected. In which they discover that maybe Fenris is kinder than Anders gave him credit for, and there is more similarity between them than Fenris had believed.
Relationships: Anders/Fenris (Dragon Age)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 172
Collections: Good Things Come In Small Packages





	List of Demands

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collaboration between muirgen_lys and Lesetoilesfous - a first for both of us. It came out of a conversation about how Fenris and Anders would have understood this particular piece of in-game dialogue _very_ differently, and rapidly getting caught up in all the ways that misunderstanding could have played out, which led to this fic. Generally, muirgen_lys wrote Anders' perspective and Lesetoilesfous wrote Fenris', taking turns on the final conversation.

Anders dodges around a pair of children playing at the side of the street, and hurries for a few steps to catch up with Hawke and the others. The bustle of the market is peaceful, in it's busy way, with gossip and shopkeepers' calls humming in the air. Anders stops to examine a pair of leather boots that he definitely can't afford but likes the look of nonetheless, paying no particular attention to the conversation amongst the others, when-

“Did I hear correctly?” asks Fenris in an offhand tone. “You're an abomination?”

Instantly Anders' head whips up, a bolt of adrenaline surging through him. He whips his head around, trying to gauge who in the crowded market is close enough to have heard. The Templar standing by the stairwell isn't looking this way, which means he probably didn't notice – praise the Maker for small mercies. But the dwarven stall keeper immediately to their left, and the two human women browsing his stall look markedly stiff, no doubt wondering whether this accusation is joking or serious.

This isn't darktown, where he's known, and a little protected by the help he's given. These respectable Marcher women will turn him in without a thought if he gives them cause.

“Why don't you shout?” he snaps. “I don't think everyone heard you.”

His heart is racing, painfully fast in his chest. He closes his eyes, trying to force his breathing to slow and his thoughts to calm, then moves off after Hawke, pointedly taking them away from the Templar lieutenant. The two women at the stall stare after him as he leaves, and he can feel their sudden suspicion, but neither of them sets off in the direction of the templar, and he breathes a small sigh of relief at the confirmation that at least he isn't going to be taken into custody right here and now.

“Do you see yourself as harmless then?” Fenris pushes. “An abomination who would never harm someone?” His voice isn't any lower, and Anders clenches his teeth and swallows.

_I can give away your secret any time I want, mage._

Cold sweat crawls over his skin, and he disciplines his breathing, trying to hold his voice steady.

Under the fear, he realizes he's angry. At the templars for putting him in this position. At Fenris, for justifying it with these empty accusations – as if Justice is the danger here, as if sheltering a spirit sundered from the fade is somehow more dangerous than the ability to dismember people with his bare hands.

At himself, for being afraid despite his best efforts.

“Like ripping someone's heart out of his chest?” he asks coldly, letting the anger help hide his fear. It makes it a little easier to breathe.

Fenris' face darkens, and he snaps out “I did that at the behest of no demon.”

Something in Anders is viciously satisfied to have gotten a rise out of him. It’s foolish, he knows. Fenris has made it clear he has the upper hand here, and provoking him will only cost Anders more in the end. But here and now, with his blood pounding in his ears, he needs that vindictiveness.

“So” he says, “we agree that it doesn't take a demon for someone to be a vicious killer? Good.”

He grits his teeth and stalks off after Hawke, leaving the elf behind him. And if his hands shake as he walks, no one has to know.

  


* * *

  


The mage is acting strangely. Considering the fact that the man is an abomination with a short temper and delusions of martyrdom, this would not normally be so unusual. But his behaviour of late has been especially odd, and only around Fenris. Fenris has made no secret of his dislike for the man, but he has never given him any reason to be so nervous around him. If anything, he has made an Avelinean effort to be patient with him. 

There’s a not-so-small part of him that is desperately, viscerally afraid of the fact that he is standing within arm’s reach of an apostate. Fortunately, it is not the reigning part. And his rational mind knows that until the mage proves himself to be a threat, it is in Fenris’ best interests to maintain the peace between himself and Hawke’s companions. Including the mage. 

The mage in question draws back, as a narrowing in the path on which they’re walking through the midge-ridden dunes of the Wounded Coast forces Fenris to step closer. Fenris frowns.

He would remember threatening him. He knows he hasn’t. Anders is not normally afraid of him. 

He steps back, anyway, ducking his head and hunching his shoulders in a way that is uncomfortably familiar. The mage’s chest huffs in a short, quick sigh of relief, and Fenris’ frown deepens. How the man could possibly have survived decades as a fugitive was entirely beyond him. He could only assume the entirety of the templar order in Ferelden was utterly incompetent. If he were a slave in Tevinter, he would have been caught in a matter of hours, giving himself away through some betrayal of his open features and his expressive body language. The thought does not give Fenris any satisfaction. 

They continue to walk through the dunes. At their backs, the sea falls in a rhythmic crash onto the rippling sands of the coast. Around them, crickets chirp a thick blanket of sound over the clouds of salt-soaked midges. Fenris swats one as it flies towards his open eye, and huffs when another climbs up his nose. Ahead of him, Anders keeps his head low. His already fair skin is somehow paler, now, and his hand is clutched tightly around his staff. Now and then, he glances back at Fenris, gold eyes sharp with anxiety. Fenris frowns at the sand as it shifts under his aching legs, trying to let the mage see that he is not looking at him (even as his curiosity grows, and he finds himself drawn to look at the man’s narrow back and hunched shoulders again and again.)

Eventually, Hawke comes jogging back to them from further up the path, wet stick in hand, mabari grinning at her heels. She smiles at them, black hair a mess of crow’s feathers. Her mabari stares eagerly at the stick in her hand. “There’s a good place to camp up ahead. Let’s take a break and continue in the morning.” 

“This is why you’re my favourite.” Isabela purrs, and Hawke flushes, reaching to scratch the back of her neck with the slobber-covered stick. Anders snorts, and hides the sound in a cough, and Fenris feels the steel wire of tension ease a little between his shoulders. Laughing at Hawke’s transparent crush on Isabela was, at least, entirely ordinary. He gives Hawke a faint smile of his own, and raises his hand for the stick. 

Hawke tosses it to him, and Dog follows its trajectory, jumping up a little before its great paws thump back onto the sand. Fenris grins at it, then turns and hurls the stick as far as he can. Both he and Anders are nearly knocked over by the mabari bolting, their hips bumping as they both fall into the dune at the side of the path. Fenris is halfway to a chuckle when Anders jerks bodily away from him. The laughter falls from Fenris’ chest like rain from a cloud, and he straightens, assessing Anders’ stance. “Are you hurt, mage?”

The faint creasing lines of crow’s feet deepen as the corners of Anders’ eyes tighten. He looks away from Fenris, and purses his lips, brushing sand from his robes. “I’m fine.” 

“Play nice you two.” Hawke calls, gently warning, over her shoulder. Fenris stares at Anders’ hunched back. The man has all but run from him, and is more than a handful of metres away now - helping Hawke and Isabela set up the camp. The sunlight glitters in his gold and copper hair. Fenris has often wondered whether it would be easier to hate him if he weren’t so beautiful. He has known many beautiful, terrible people. Knowing the truth of their minds and their characters had made them repulsive to him, poisonous and cloying. But Fenris cannot yet summon the same disgust for the mage. It is difficult to see him as a bloodthirsty magister when he’s trying and failing to bluff at cards. 

Dog bumps its great, wet nose against the back of his hand, damp stick cradled tenderly between its massive jaws. Fenris scratches the soft, warm silky fur on the top of its head, and tears his gaze away from Anders’ back. Whatever is wrong with the mage, Hawke will likely fix it. It’s not as if he is about to confide in Fenris, of all people.

  


* * *

  


“We need to talk.”

Fenris stares up at Anders. It’s late. Isabela and Hawke had tumbled into Hawke’s tent, and Dog is sleeping mildly beside the fire. Fenris had been polishing his sword in the light of the flames, bare feet sinking into the cooling sand. Above them, the sky is clear and bright and full of stars. The sea sings as it breaks against the land.

Normally, the mage would be asleep by now. Or stargazing. He is not in the habit of propositioning Fenris for polite conversation. Fenris cannot decide what to think of the development. The fact that the mage is wringing his long, slender hands, over and over, as if trying to make them clean, does not fill him with optimism. He says, as evenly as he can, “We are talking now.”

Anders huffs, once, short and sharp. His wringing hands suddenly break and fall to his sides. He looks away from Fenris, at the dark blue humps of the dunes in the dark. The wind whistles through the reeds, making the flames flicker and dance. “Very funny. I’m serious.”

Fenris cannot find the energy to be irritated when he is still struggling not to be confused. “As am I. Speak, mage. What is troubling you?”

Anders looks away, staring into the fire. His breath comes faster, as though he’s working himself up to something, and at last he says, “You can’t leave me in suspense like this Fenris. I don’t know what you want.”

“I know that it does not come easily to you, mage, but I would find it much easier to understand you if you spoke sense.” Fenris is still trying to be patient. The fact that the mage seems to have taken leave of his reason is not aiding this endeavour. He watches him, sharply, trying to find any flicker of magic. Such things would, at least, be a little easier to see in the dark.

Anders grimaces, his hands twisting the fabric of his coat, and for a moment his face looks haunted, as though there are tears, or manic laughter lurking somewhere under his surface. “I was expecting you that night,” he says. “I figured you’d made your point, then you’d come and make your demands. But it’s been three days and I just… I need to know.” He takes a ragged breath, lets it out in a rush, and visibly steels himself, pushing his shoulders back. “Look I know the lay of the land,” he said. “You have all the cards here. I understand that. So just tell me what you want. If it’s money...the donations for the clinic are off limits, those are for my patients, but whatever I earn with Hawke is on the table. You can have half, two-thirds, more, whatever you want. I'd appreciate you leaving me enough for food. If it's something else...I can offer healing, or potions if that's what you prefer. Or work, Maker knows that mansion of yours could use a cleaning. If it's something sexual the answer is no, I don't...I don't do that anymore, I can't, I'd rather you just turn me in. But almost anything else, I’ll play along. Just tell me what you want.”

Fenris feels abruptly as if he is going to be sick. He takes a moment to steel himself, assessing with the detachment of habit the cold acid of bile rolling in his stomach. He is acutely aware of the mage’s eyes on him. He curls his fingers tightly enough around the hilt of the sword in his lap that the lyrium on his hand burns, tight and burning like steel wire. He takes a slow, careful breath through his nose, and lets it out through his mouth, and focuses on the pop and crackle of the fire. He tries to gather his thoughts. They skitter from his grasp like frightened halla. Where is this coming from? Why? And why in the name of the Maker does he sound like he’s offered these things before? Fenris’ mind keeps returning to the crack in his voice as he’d ruled out sexual favours. I don’t do that anymore. Anymore. Anymore. Fenris squeezes his eyes shut, trying to shake the thought loose and regain control of his stomach. 

“Whatever I have done to make you feel under...obligation to me,” Fenris says, choosing his words carefully ( _under my control_ sits like lead under his tongue), “you are released from it. I do not. I _would_ not -” Fenris realizes that he’s begun to raise his voice and stops, breathes again, quick and short in his impatience. “I do not want your money or your _services_ ,” Fenris’ mouth twists as he says the word, “in any capacity. I have no intention to coerce you. It is done. You are free.” 

Anders' eyes have narrowed throughout this recitation, and his jaw clenches as he digests Fenris’ words. “What then?” he demands. “If there is nothing I have that you want, what was the point of holding my secret over my head? Was it just to remind me to fear you? If you don’t want anything, what was the point?” the last question comes out hard, and carefully controlled. There is an undercurrent of helpless despair running through the words, heavy, and thick, hidden but inescapably present. 

Fenris’ mouth is dry. He thinks, with a dreadful sort of understanding, of the conversation they’d had in Lowtown market. Hawke had delivered the revelation so carelessly. _Oh, by the way, Anders gets all glowy sometimes because his body is a house for a spirit of Justice. We’ve got it under control_. And then she’d swaggered away, as if Fenris’ knees hadn’t suddenly been rendered immobile by the revelation, as if his skin wasn’t crawling, as if his heart wasn’t trying to claw its way into his throat. So he’d turned to the mage, and tried to see anything of the demon, and tried to ignore the awful, gnawing fear that had risen in him when he couldn’t see anything. If he couldn’t see this, what else had he missed? 

But Hawke wanted them to be civil, and Fenris wanted to trust her, and he had needed in that moment more badly than he had remembered needing anything in recent months, to know that that trust had not been misplaced.

It had never occurred to him to wonder whether the mage had ever asked himself the same thing. 

In the present, Fenris swallows the sour taste of something like shame at the back of his dry, aching throat. Beside the fire, Dog snuffles and shifts its great head. Fenris lets himself be reassured by the beast’s presence before forcing himself to look up at the mage before him, trying to ignore the way his face is burning. “I did not mean - that was not my intention. I did not wish to scare you.” Memories flood, unbidden, to his mind, of Hadriana grinning as she pinched him, and burned him, and cut him, until he flinched when she entered the room. It was never quickly enough to miss her smile. Fenris forces himself to meet Anders’ eyes. They’re nearly black in the dark, lit red and gold by the flame. He admits, a little roughly, “I have never wanted to frighten you, Anders.” It is the truth. 

Anders stares at him for several seconds, eyes searching his face, as though looking for some secret cruelty there, some alternate explanation, until finally he sits down heavily beside the fire, burying his face in his hands. It takes Fenris a moment to realise he is laughing. 

“You never wanted to frighten me,” he manages at last. And on second thought, from the sound of his voice, maybe those are sobs. It’s hard to say. 

“You never wanted...” he breaks off, and now he is laughing for sure, a ragged sound with edges like broken glass. “Maker, Fenris...what were you thinking? I’ve been worrying myself sick over this for days. I should have just...” he breaks down in that near-hysterical laughter again, until his hands drop from his face to clench in his coat. He looks as though he might scream, if Isabela and Hawke, happily ensconced in their tent just across the camp, were not certain to hear.

Carefully, moving as slowly as he can, Fenris sets his sword down onto the sand, as far away from Anders as he can place it. Then he turns a little more fully to the mage beside him, and clears his throat, as if that will do anything to ease his discomfort. “I…” He starts, and hesitates. He had seen intricate, beautiful glass sculptures in Tevinter: demonstrations of magic and wealth, many were delicate enough to shatter at a touch. Something of the tension in Anders’ shoulders reminds Fenris of the things, now. He looks brittle. Fenris is worried that a sudden movement will shatter him. He is certain that he would not know how to repair the pieces. 

(If he survived the onslaught of the mage’s demon, an angry, frightened part of him whispers. Fenris tries to ignore it.) 

He starts again. “I was not thinking.” And then, because the mage has shown much of himself in this and Fenris thinks he has shared very little of it by choice, he adds, “I was afraid.” The admission is not as difficult as he had thought it would be. Once he’s begun, the rest comes tumbling from his lips like a landslide. “Hawke had said that you were an abomination and I was frightened. Of you. Of what she was asking of me. Of what she might have done. I did not think. I needed to know whether you would hurt me.” Fenris stops, then, feeling strangely breathless. He stares at the fire, watching the blackened logs crack and crumble under the heat. The wind runs kissing and cold over his neck. “I have known many demons. I would not offer myself to their mercies again.” Cheeks hot from the fire, Fenris turns and forces himself to meet Anders’ eyes. “Not even for Hawke.”

Anders watches him, his eyes glowing golden brown in the firelight, and something flickers in his face, unreadable. His lips press together as if bottling up words behind them, a flood, too many to speak at once. He looks down at his hands, and slowly, slowly, Fenris can see him drag himself under control, the tension in his shoulders softening, his hands stilling where they tangle in the fabric of his coat. 

“I...am sorry,” he says at last. He sounds strained still, but less frantic, and when he looks back up to meet Fenris’ eyes there is a weariness there that looks deep as the ocean, taking the place of the fear that had been there before.

Fenris shakes his head, shrugging off the clinging fingers of old suffering. “It is in the past. It will not happen again.” He shifts and pushes his toes through the silky, shifting sand. Fenris stretches his leg, trying to ease the burn of the lyrium wrapped around his calf, squeezing it with bruising force. It helps a little. 

He looks at the mage again. He does look calmer now: his face flickers between light and shadow in the jumping glow of the fire. It makes Fenris think of Orlesian masks. There was one favoured by fans of the theatre, split half into a laughing grin and the other into a weeping grimace. Between one moment and the next, he imagines he can see both on Anders’ haggard features. The silence that settles between them is almost companionable, broken only by the hiss and hush of the sea, and Hawke’s quiet snoring. Above them the moon is bright and full, fat with silver light as it hangs over the deep blue sky. 

Fenris likes silence. So he is not sure what it is, exactly, that motivates him to break it. But he finds himself speaking without thinking, palms and fingers resting on the rough bark of the log on which he sits. “You would have done those things, if I had asked. Even thinking that I was abusing you. Because you were afraid of what I would do if you did not.” It’s not exactly a question, but Fenris finds himself wanting an answer. He feels as if he has inadvertently begun to gather pieces of the puzzle that compose the man beside him. He wants to see more of the picture. He continues. “You could have told Hawke. Or Isabela. Why didn’t you?”

“And ask them to do what?” asks Anders softly. It’s not really a question. He shakes his head. “Hawke has her own people to protect. She cannot go toe to toe with the templars for me. And it would be no kindness to ask her to choose between you and me, which of us she preferred to keep. Better...better to go along with it. If your demands were something I could stomach, then everyone could leave happy.” He stares into the fire, watching the shifting patterns, the occasional flash of sparks rising up into the night. “I have made such bargains before,” he said. “Every mage has. Or at least, every apostate. They’re a small enough price to pay for freedom.”

“You are not happy.” Fenris says, quietly. It is not a revelation. The mage has a terrible poker face. For all his humour and his attempts at levity, his grief and his anger bleed into his every movement. But he is hardly the only man in Thedas to be wounded, and Fenris had not wanted to bear the burden of his suffering. He continues, “It is not freedom, if it is paid for in service to your abusers, against your will.” He glances at Anders then, willing the mage to only listen to him, for once. He takes sharp breath, and offers a moment of levity, an olive branch. “Of all the people in the world to underestimate Marian Hawke, I had not thought that you would be one of them.”

It draws a chuckle out of the mage, at least. “There is that,” he says. Then he sobers, and continues, “I know she would do it. But it would bring suspicion down on her house, and I won’t be responsible for the templars taking another mage.” He smiles at Fenris, and there is, if not true joy, then at least a bittersweetness to it. “Maybe once she’s made her fortune out of all the ragged trousers she keeps collecting, and taken her place in hightown, I can hide behind her then.” 

He looks back into the fire, and for a long moment the silence stretches. When he finally speaks, his voice is low, so that a human would have had to strain to hear, and even Fenris has to pay attention or lose his words in the crackle of the flames. “There are degrees of freedom,” he says. “I may not like some of the compromises I am forced to make to keep mine. But they are better than the alternative.” He closes his eyes, the firelight flickering across his skin. “There was a templar not ten yards away,” he said. “When you asked me if I was an abomination. Had the market been a little quieter, I would have been in the gallows within an hour. And likely dead, or Tranquil, by nightfall.” He shakes his head. “You meant no harm,” he murmurs. “I’m grateful for that. Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but I am. You know what I am, and with that knowledge you hold my life in your hands. And maybe you’re right that that’s not freedom. But it’s more freedom than the circle. The alternatives are worse.”

Fenris considers this, turning the words over and over in his head until he thinks he has the sense of them. “You are welcome.” He says, first. He does not want the mage’s gratitude. But he knows how it feels, to offer it, and have it waved away. He pauses before he continues, shifting to roll his shoulders and try and ease the tension of the lyrium running down his back. “I understand your point.” Fenris sits forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and staring at his hands as he links them in his lap. “I have made such negotiations with myself. But mage...Anders. Such a compromise is not freedom. Only another way in which they are still forcing you to dance upon their strings.” 

Fenris sighs, and bends to add another log from the rough pile they had gathered earlier to the fire. “It is easier to say than to do. I know that sometimes compromise is the only path to survival.” (He thinks of hands, and magic, and falling to his knees.) “I do not judge you for it. But you must understand, Anders.” Fenris looks at Anders then, hoping the mage can see something of the anger and fervour that he feels in his expression. “You must understand, it is not freedom. As long as you tell yourself that it is, you are not free. You are only telling yourself a lie.” Fenris thinks, bitterly, of his time in Seheron. He pushes the memory away. 

Fenris sits up, curving his back as he stretches and breaking the link of his hands to grasp his knees. “And you misunderstood me, before. I did not mean that you should have asked Hawke to combat the templars. I pray that even she would not be so foolish, though I have not yet ruled out such a possibility.” The woman in questions snorts, loudly, in her tent. Fenris grins a little, and glances at Anders to see him doing the same. Something eases in his chest as he continues, “but she could certainly stop me. And she would not thank you, for keeping it from her, if I were the kind of man to make such a request.” On the other side of the fire, Dog slumps into the sand and twitches as it dreams. Fenris feels the corner of his mouth curve a little as he watches the creature. The fire spits. “It is not a matter of choosing between us. She would not wish for me to abuse you in such a manner. If she had been the one to make the request, I would not have hesitated to help you.” He offers Anders a smile, then, to soften what comes next. “And I do not even like you.” 

Even as he says the words, he is unsure of the truth of them. Fenris cannot describe the feeling in his chest as anything other than warm, as he looks at the mage, and somewhat protective. He feels struck, suddenly, by how profoundly he wishes to pull the man from the jaws of his abuse, as Fenris had clawed his way free of his own.

Anders lets out a short huff of air, and a hint of a wry smile flashes across his face. “Perhaps,” he said. “I’ve had few enough people I could count on for that kind of help, in my life. The wardens, at first. But in the end the templars still managed to get me alone, and surrounded. If not for Justice I would have died, that day. He was trapped outside the fade, without a body, and I was a dead man walking. We saved each other. And since then...I know my patients are grateful enough for my work that they at least will not turn me in themselves. But to ask someone to turn on a friend for me seemed...much to ask.” He shook his head. “I really was not expecting to end this night with the person in our company who most despises me insisting that I do not demand enough from my friends,” he said, and there was something in his voice, a question, as if he could not believe Fenris meant the things he said. 

“Blame Marian.” Fenris says, reflexively, and regrets it when he sees the way Anders’ expression shutters. He clears his throat, and wishes he’d had the foresight to fill a flask with some of Danarius’ wine. Instead, he continues, “I know what it is, to be alone. But what I have come to learn, of friendship. What has been taught to me...” Fenris thinks, briefly, of thick jungles and sandy beaches and freedom - for the first time in his life - dizzying and intoxicating.

“It is not a transaction, to be withdrawn when it becomes too difficult, or too troublesome. It is a relationship.” He can almost hear Sumena’s voice in his head as he repeats the words she’d said to him, so many years ago. “It’s a conversation. It is a...push and pull of love and compromise. A friend does not wish to see you suffer in order to spare their discomfort. They wish to help you. And if they cannot help, then they will fight beside you, and suffer with you.” Fenris thinks of a sandy beach, and blood between his toes. He shuts his eyes and takes a deep, slow breath. This is the lesson with which he has struggled the most. “A friend forgives you. And asks for patience, in turn.” 

Fenris fights the jagged, uneasy tangle of grief and regret trying to make itself known in his chest, and focuses on the man before him. “Marian cares for you, deeply. You can expect more than merely her tolerance.” 

Fenris pauses before he adds, looking away from the mage as heat rushes up the back of his neck with something like embarrassment, “and I do not despise you. I disagree with you. It is not the same.” 

He despises Hadriana. He despises Danarius. He does not hate Anders. At present, with the man looking at him like he holds the secret to his salvation, and seeming far too young and vulnerable for it, Fenris cannot even find the energy to dislike him. He looks at Anders and feels only familiarity: sympathy, and understanding, and a certain comfort in their mutual friendship with the impossible woman asleep in the tent beside them. 

Nearby, the sea falls against the sand with a sound like singing. The crash of it is soft and thick in Fenris’ ears with the memory of a different beach, years ago, and a woman who had given him kindness when he had nothing to give her in return. He half imagines he can feel her, now, in the firelight, holding out her hand.

Fenris offers Anders a small, honest, gentle smile. “Sleep, mage. No harm will come to you. And you will need rest, to weather the battles ahead.”

Above them, the moon is bright and full and beautiful.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!! We hope you enjoyed!!! :D 
> 
> If anyone wants to chat about DA or fenders, or just to say hi, you can find Lesetoilesfous on tumblr at lesetoilesfous.tumblr.com - she'd be delighted to hear from you!!!


End file.
